


batter to have loved and lost

by paddingtonfan69



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Character Death, very soft friends sharing grief together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paddingtonfan69/pseuds/paddingtonfan69
Summary: Owen knows that look. He knows it from every mirror he’d looked in in the months after the last time he was here.“She… she…” Jamie starts, but can’t finish. She doesn’t need to.Owen pulls her closer, so her head can be tucked into his shoulder when she starts weeping. He kisses the top of her head, feels his own tears start in the back of his throat.“I know, love,” he murmurs, “I know.”And he does.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma, Owen Sharma & Jamie
Comments: 54
Kudos: 253





	batter to have loved and lost

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little tribute to these two and their shared moments over the years. Also, sorry about the title, sometimes the pun just calls to you.

Owen wakes up with an overwhelming dread. 

He knows. Christ, he wishes he didn’t, but he knows. He’s only felt this sickening apprehension once before, over a decade ago, and it’s enough to propel him out of bed, out of his flat, out of Paris, until he is on a train to London trying to stop his hands from shaking.

He calls his sous chef from a pay phone in London while he waits for his rental car; tries to keep his voice steady, but he can’t stop it from cracking. 

The drive from London to Bly is achingly familiar; he tries not to think of the last time he did it, Dani snoring in the backseat and Owen being inexplicably charmed by it. 

A couple years ago, when he’d made the trip to Vermont, he’d happily slept on the couch, but could hear Dani snoring even though the walls.

“How do you live like this?” He’d teased Jamie the next morning, “your earplug budget must be absolutely staggering.”

Jamie had grinned, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “the things we do for love, mate.”

Now, he feels her before he sees her, his legs instinctively taking him on the familiar route to the lake. His heart starts when he passes the well, but he can’t - not right now. Not when he can make out the hunched form of Jamie on the edge of the lake, knees hugged to her chest, her body shivering violently. 

He takes off his coat as soon as he gets to her, wrapping it around her shoulders. She barely notices, still staring straight ahead. Owen sits beside her, places his hands on her shoulders, rubbing up and down her arms until she finally stops shaking. She blinks once, twice, before meeting his eyes, but barely seeing him.

And, oh, Owen knows that look. He knows it from every mirror he’d looked in in the months after the last time he was here. 

“She… she…” Jamie starts, but can’t finish. She doesn’t need to. 

Owen pulls her closer, so her head can be tucked into his shoulder when she starts weeping. He kisses the top of her head, feels his own tears start in the back of his throat. 

“I know, love,” he murmurs, “I know.”

And he does.

* * *

“A sandwich? I already have a sandwich.”

Owen looks down to his own, frankly gorgeous, Caprese sandwich, resplendent on its homemade sourdough, then regards the soggy piece of toast that Jamie brandishes at him across the greenhouse. 

“That, my friend, is not a sandwich,” he says, walking cautiously over to her. Jamie is the one person in the month he’s been here who stills eyes him warily. 

“She takes a minute or two longer than the others to warm up to most people,” Hannah had told him gently, when she watched him make the sandwich, a slight tease in her eye.

“Ah, Mrs. Grose, I’m not most people,” he’d said, and was gratified to see the smile that peeked through Hannah's normally stoic face. “I am the one who provides the food.”

At that, Hannah had fully laughed and it sent a warmth down his chest. 

Jamie looks down at the sandwich as Owen approaches her, like it’s one of her weeds, and Owen feels an odd protectiveness over it, over the basil peeking out, its hint of life at home here in the greenhouse. 

“Oh come on, just try it,” he pushes, “your wonder bread and marmite will be waiting.”

Jamie smiles a little bit at this, reluctantly takes the sandwich from him. He can’t stop himself from grinning as she bites into the sandwich, and fails to hide the brief moment of bliss that crosses her face. 

“Fuck, that’s good,” she says, mouth still full. 

“You’re welcome,” Owen says smugly. 

Jamie rolls her eyes at him, but keeps eating. 

“Why are you trying so hard, anyway?” she asks, not with any bite, just a sort of curiosity, as she perches on the edge of a flower bed, “aren’t we just, I don’t know, coworkers?”

After a moment of hesitation, he sits next to her. 

“Well, at this particular moment, I don’t have much by the way of friends, so I’m reduced to making outstanding sandwiches for my coworkers _.”_

Jamie chuckles, still eating. “Guess it could be worse.”

“Another win for the Owen Sharma charm,” he says with a grin, “the Owen Charm-a.”

“That’s terrible,” Jamie says, but her eyes are crinkled up at the corners, “I guess it was only a matter of time though. Once you get Hannah, the rest can only follow.”

“I got Hannah?” he asks, a tad too eagerly.

Jamie eyes him, half of her mouth quirking up in a smile.

“Or, maybe she got you now, eh?”

Owen laughs a little too loudly, hand coming up to run through his hair. Jamie just grins at him. 

“Oh shut it and eat your sandwich,” he says. 

* * *

Jamie stays in his flat in Paris for the next few weeks. Owen doesn’t try to make her talk, just feeds her and hydrates her, puts her in the shower every few days. 

He spends too much money on a long distance call to the States, making sure that the rent is still being paid on Jamie’s shop and her flat. When he finally gets the landlord on the phone, he seems surprised by the call.

“Oh yeah,” the landlord says, so loud and American, “Miss Clayton paid it out through the end of the year, said she didn’t want to worry anyone. Too good for this world, that one. Anyway, what was your name again, pal?”

And Owen doesn’t answer because he’s dropped the receiver and collapsed to the floor, back against the wall. He puts his head in his hands and cries, like he hasn't in years, not since the first few weeks after Bly. He thinks of the blur of days after his mother died, of Dani offering him a terrible cup of tea, telling him to please make fun of it, thinks of Hannah offering him a much better cup of tea after, and when Dani left murmuring, “she’s a good one, isn’t she?”

Jamie finds him in the hallway and sits with him, encompassing them both in Owen’s ratty old comforter.

“I’m supposed to be taking care of you,” he finally says, sniffing a bit, “sorry for doing a shit job at it.”

She nudges him with her shoulder. “You’re not doing a shit job, I just, God, how do you - how do you keep on going?”

Owen breathes out a long breath. 

“You just do. Somehow. I wish I could explain it better but, you just do.” 

“Okay, maybe you are a shit comforter.”

Owen pulls the blanket closer around them. 

“No, _this_ is a shit comforter.”

“Fuck off,” she says, with just a huff of laughter. It’s the first time she’s laughed this whole time and it makes Owen almost start crying again. 

He doesn’t, though. Instead he gets to his feet, noticing how his bones creak when he gets up. 

“Come on, now,” he says, offering a hand to Jamie, “there’s leftover creme brulee that’s not going to eat itself.”

“Ah,” she says, a hint of a smile starting, “that’s how you get through it, then?”

“Something like that.”

* * *

“She’s awfully pretty, don’t you think?” Hannah asks, looking out the kitchen window, where Dani chases Flora on the lawn. 

Owen nods noncommittally, focusing more on breaking down his chicken than on anything else, enjoying the hum of conversation in the kitchen. 

“Only if you’re into those obviously pretty blonde American types,” Jamie scoffs, a tad too loud, “we’ve all seen it.”

Owen grins, looks up to share a glance with Hannah who smiles back at him, eyes shining in amusement. She’d been a little far off these past few days, but here, looking at him in his kitchen, she feels so present and full of life that Owen feels warm all the way down to his toes. 

“Oh, stop with the look,” Jamie says. 

“Look?” Owen asks innocently, going back to his chicken.

“I don’t know to what you’re referring,” Hannah says. 

“Maybe,” Owen says, pretending to think about it, “she’s referring to the good looks of our dear friend Miss Clayton.”

Hannah chuckles a little. Jamie smacks him lightly with his own dish towel, and he retaliates by wiping one of his dirty chicken hands on her arm. 

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” she says, before flicking him some of her tea at him.

He laughs and ducks, grinning at the way Hannah rolls her eyes at the two of them. 

“What’s going on in here?”

They both turn to see Dani walk into the kitchen, hair windswept from the outdoors, smiling widely. Owen turns to Jamie, who is just a touch pinker than she was ten seconds ago.

“What is going on in here, Jamie?” Owen asks. 

Jamie just gives him a shit-eating grin. 

“Well, Owen was just remarking how beautiful Hannah looks today.”

Owen coughs. Hannah’s eyebrows raise. Jamie looks annoyingly self-satisfied. Dani, seemingly missing all of it, just looks at Hannah.

“You do look lovely today, Hannah,” she says. 

“Thank you,” Hannah murmurs, before her eyes glance to Owen.

Then Miles runs in, Flora on his heels with a request to help Owen with dinner and there’s a hint of chaos and laughter, making looks and shared smiles and certain people looking beautiful seem to be forgotten. But once they sit down to eat, Owen notices the way Jamie’s eyes keep flicking to Dani and he smiles.

* * *

He opens a restaurant in America. 

“I know why you’re doing this, you know,” Jamie says when she comes down to Boston for his opening. 

“Because Americans will pay exorbitant amounts of money for anything tangentially French?” He offers. 

Jamie just stares him down. 

“Ohhh,” he says slowly, “you think that I made this choice so I could be closer to my darling friend and former coworker Jamie? Don’t flatter yourself.”

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t need you to move to this country just to take care of me.”

“I know that, love,” he says softly. 

They’re standing in his new flat - well, _apartment,_ Jamie awkwardly leaning on the doorway. 

“Anyway, I got you something,” she says, straightening, “a welcome of sorts.”

He eyes her up and down. “Must be pretty small.”

She rolls her eyes. “Follow me.”

He follows as he leads her up the three flights of stairs in this building. He finds himself slightly out of breath at the climb.

“Keep up, old man,” Jamie says with a smirk, and Owen smiles. Still, over a year after the fact, seeing even a partial smile from her feels like a gift. 

“So it turns out,” she says as she climbs, “when you sent me your new address, it was shockingly easy to get up here. Just one or two times, but enough.”

“Enough for what?”

He finally climbs up the last few steps, eyeing Jamie, who holds the door to the rooftop open for him. He walks through it and sucks a deep breath in. 

“Jamie…”

“I just figured, you know, you need all your herbs for your fancy new restaurant and I’ll probably be saving you a boatload of money by - oof.”

She’s cut off by Owen’s arms around her, picking her off her feet. He spins her around his roof, taking in each carefully planted herb in its specific place. It smells like a kitchen, it smells like a garden, it smells like the last fifteen years between the two of them. 

“It’s perfect,” he says, setting her down lightly, not bothering to hide the fact that his eyes are welling up. 

“Yeah?” she says, rubbing the back of her neck, “it still needs a lot of work, but I figure there’s a train that comes down every so often, so…”

Owen, unable to help himself, still with an arm around Jamie, kisses the top of her head. 

“She would have loved it,” he whispers. 

Jamie lets out a sound that might be a hiccup and might be a laugh into his chest. 

“Yeah, she would have,” she says and it’s so achingly sad that all Owen can do is laugh so hard he starts crying again.

That night, when he takes Jamie to his new place, she stops and stares at the two framed photos on the wall for a long time, silent tears falling down her face. 

“You didn’t have to,” she murmurs.

“Oh, I did though.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “Come now, let me feed you.”

* * *

The night before Dani and Jamie’s flight leaves for America, the three of them get dinner at a pub in London.

“The food’s shit,” Owen remarks, watching one of his chips bend over, a bead of grease falling down to his plate.

“Ah, but the company’s alright,” Jamie says, nudging him with her foot under the table. 

He nods, tries to smile a little. It comes out strained. He notices the same strain echoed in Dani’s face, until Jamie’s hand finds hers on the table. Then a small little smile tugs up her mouth as she looks to Jamie, eyes becoming liquid and soft. 

“Loo,” Owen manages to get out before he’s walking as fast as he can down the dirty pub hallway to the toilets, not stopping until he’s alone, hands gripping the edges of the sink, hunched over, breath coming out in sobs. 

That’s how Jamie finds him five minutes later. She doesn’t say anything, just offers him a handkerchief that is clearly Dani’s, all soft and pastel. He takes it and wipes his eyes, tries to get his breathing back to normal. 

“I suppose she won’t want this back?” He asks, once he’s successfully calmed a bit. 

Jamie examines the handkerchief, which is, frankly, quite disgusting now. 

“Keep it. A little something to remember us by until next time,” she says with a small smile.

And because it’s so much easier to tease than to fully delve into why he spent ten minutes weeping in the loo, he raises his eyebrows and says, “ah, so it’s an us now, I see?” 

Jamie smiles her little half smile and he tries not to let it ache. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself against the wall. 

“Don’t,” he starts, and breathes again, a little shakily, “don’t take a moment of it for granted, you promise?”

She nods, suddenly solemn. 

“Promise.”

* * *

It’s February in Boston and Owen has dragged Jamie to a new place in the North End he’s been wanting to try. It’s all soft lighting and candles; the American lack of subtlety on full display for a holiday they’d both forgotten existed.

“Do you think,” Jamie asks, taking in their surroundings, “that any of them are actually in love?”

Owen looks around, seeing the young woman to their right decidedly looking anywhere that is not her date and his increasingly loud stories about the Red Sox; then to the two gentlemen behind Jamie, whose ring-clad hands have slowly gotten closer over the course of their meal, both of them seemingly unable to stop smiling. 

“Oh, I’d give it about 50-50,” he says to Jamie.

She looks behind her, gives a sad little smile.

“Nice that the laws have changed down here,” she says, voice almost cracking, but not quite.

“Yes, Massachusetts’ claim to fame,” he says, a bit too brightly, “well, that and wasting a lot of perfectly good tea a couple hundred years ago.”

Jamie huffs, not quite a laugh. 

“You’ve always been good at that, you know. At trying to make me laugh.”

“But not succeeding? Oh, you wound me.”

She grins a little at this, before looking back around at the restaurant. 

“Have you ever thought about-” she starts, then takes a deep breath, “This might make me a terrible person, but sometimes, when I see two people who think they’re in love, I want to tell them that they don’t really have it. I know that’s awful, but I just know in my gut that,” she gestures at Red Sox bloke next to them, “he is not going to find every possible excuse to make her day better, and she’s probably going to grow to resent him, and sometimes it makes just makes me so blindingly angry that they get to-”

“Live? Exist? Have long wonderful monotonous years of being in each other’s company? When a woman who was exquisite in every possible way was taken from you far too soon?” He takes a long draw of his wine, breathes out slowly. “No, can’t say I’ve ever thought about it.”

Jamie’s hand finds his across the table and he holds onto it. Neither of them speak for a while, just stay like that until the waitress comes over with their food. 

“You two make a lovely couple,” she says, setting down their gnocchi. 

Owen tries his best not to laugh. Jamie has no such qualms, snorting a little bit of wine out of her nose.

“Not a couple,” she clarifies, after coughing for a few seconds. “just a couple of old sad sacks stuck with each other.”

“There are worse people to be stuck with, I suppose,” Owen says with a smile.

Jame smiles back, raises her glass to him.

“Yeah, I suppose there are.”


End file.
